Return of the DEADline

It’s back and it’s not safe here anymore. You need to go, get far away from here before it gets you too. No one is safe because the deadline is back! Of course, maybe you’re like me and you didn’t take it seriously. That’s the problem, it wants you to feel safe! That’s how it gets you. You’ve been warned, the deadline is here!

Seven days… I had seven days before it came for me. The human brain is a marvelous engine of rationalization. Seven days is a lifetime! Whole kingdoms have risen and fallen in seven days. Maybe, you are like me and think that if you wait long enough seven days will turn into fourteen. After all, tomorrow is always a day away, why should a deadline be any different…

Unfortunately the cracks start to show. It’s subtle at first, a late night awakening. A cold breath on your skin. The hair on the back of your neck stands up. There is only so much twitter and youtube to distract you from the horrors that are slowly starting to appear around you.

Then again, it’s all in your head, right? Halloween time! It’s a fun time of the year and of course your mind will play tricks on you. A hallway that was never in your house before? Just a trick of the shadows! Nothing that the warm glow of a nice netflix movie can’t fix. The deadline can wait, there’s nothing to fear.

You feel it, don’t you? The pressure of it in the room, I do. I can’t ignore it anymore. It’s here, as it promised it would be. I was warned, seven days ago! You dismiss me. Ramblings of a mad man! Mad, as if my senses haven’t been sharpened living with this presence, this abomination! The mere weight of the air itself is crushing! Mad? No, just roused from a blissful ignorance to the reality of the world around me!

Don’t scoff, this isn’t for me. This is for you. It is a warning, or maybe a plea. Get far away, hide while you still can, the deadline is back!

This (poorly written) flash-fiction brought to you by the letters OhShit and the number 8 because I have a grant proposal due today that should be ~ 15 pages when it is, in fact, only 8 pages right now. Yep, I’m a goner. The original deadline story was (in my opinion) better (linked again here), but you be the judge!